


A Darker Night

by Gyre_and_Gimble



Series: Bedside Manners [1]
Category: Vampyr (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Morally Ambiguous Character, Pre-Slash, Questioning Reality, dark pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28533180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyre_and_Gimble/pseuds/Gyre_and_Gimble
Summary: There is a deep, deep cruelty in giving a thing new birth.
Relationships: Jonathan Reid & Edgar Swansea, Jonathan Reid & Mary Reid, Jonathan Reid & Myrddin Wyllt, Sean Hampton & Jonathan Reid, Sean Hampton/Jonathan Reid
Series: Bedside Manners [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2094597
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

This isn’t the first body pit he’s woken up in.

Jonathan Reid's new first breaths taste of moldering flesh, rotten blood, and the miasma of bloated and festering corpses. He’s had this nightmare before: waking up among the lifeless bodies of his comrades, his family, of women and children and animals, all lumped together, all equal in death. Festering, oozing, disgusting death; no peace here, no lights at the end of any tunnel. There was just blood, and his own slow, pounding, greedy, _hungry_ heartbeat.

A cloud of ash hangs in the stagnant air, and at the end of it all, there _is_ a light – not white or gold, as Jonathan had often been encouraged to imagine, but red. Pulsing, living, vibrant, and so heartbreakingly beautiful. He needs it – needs to possess it, to become it, to make it so much a part of himself that the two will be forever inextricable.

The light speaks, but he can’t understand its words. The sounds it makes change as he lowers his head to drink, joins the throbbing, thirsty, wailing hum in his ears. Once the thirst recedes, he takes in great, heaving gulps of air, cold against his teeth – he feels them so keenly, now. How had he never felt his teeth this way, before?

Then Mary is on the ground – _his_ Mary, his sweet sister, on the ground, _crying_ for him, asking what he has done, and all at once Jonathan can taste the reeking death all around him. Blood throbs pitifully from the holes in Mary’s neck, and Jonathan knows before he tries to compress them that she is past saving.

So, he kisses her. Jonathan holds his sister and cries, gives voice to his pain, accepts that the war will never really leave – will follow him everywhere he goes. One by one, all and everything will fall to ruin; everyone he has ever known will march one by one into pits just like this and join the churning pool of death and misery mankind seems always to find places for.

He doesn’t know– at least, hasn’t accepted – what he is. He doesn’t understand how these changes came to pass, can’t begin to imagine that what he’s done will make a monster of Mary, too.

Then there is noise, shouting – someone is pointing a gun at him. They think he’s killed her – killed _his_ Mary – but no, they must understand.

In place of understanding, the shouting stranger gifts Jonathan a bullet.

He flees – jumps down to the street, hands and feet splattering in the filth that clings to the cobbles, and he runs. There is more shouting, more shooting – but, this can’t be right, Jonathan thinks. All the shooting was back on the continent – he was home. This was England – this was _London_ – why would bullets be seeking him, here?

A nightmare, he decides. It makes it easier to forgive himself for cutting these poor men down – but he _tries_ to talk to them, doesn’t _want_ to hurt anyone, anymore. Some part of him will be a soldier, always, but soldiers go _home_. Jonathan had done that, had gone home, but the guns and death and screaming have followed him.

The nightmare gifts Jonathan a corpse with a machete sticking out of its chest, and he pulls it out easily. Further proof of Jonathan’s dreaming state is the lack of resistance from the dead flesh, and the absence of the wet, sucking noise he knows should come when he takes it. His demons look like men, and they don’t let him choose to walk away. Jonathan hacks through them, apologizing all the while, because this doesn’t feel right, none of it.

A nightmare, surely.

His chest hurts, and he’s in the foundry, with its clanking gears and molten crucibles, and there are more men with guns. They call him vermin, and he asks what they want, but no one will talk to him. Dawn is breaking and it hurts him so, and why, _why_ would that be? He finds a house, abandoned - all peeling paint and dust and bad memories. It’s here that the pace of his nightmare slows, and Jonathan is given the terrible gift of reflection. His memories are red and clouded with ash, pulsing and heaving behind his eyes and under his skin like a fever. Like an infection.

Is he sick? He must be – unhygienic, all those corpses. He is a doctor, after all – yes, a doctor. His name is Jonathan Reid, and he is a doctor. This doesn’t tell him why he’s being chased, or why he’s plagued with these impossible memories. He would _never_ hurt Mary, and he certainly couldn’t have been dead when he’d been thrown into that pit. But how else would he have ended up there?

_Twelve dreams for the Red Queen, under crown of stone…_

The marks on Jonathan’s neck itch, and he needs to lie down.

There is a man, dead in a chair. There appears to be a bullet in his head, but Jonathan checks his pulse, anyway. The corpse’s rigor and the color of the blood splattered on the wall tell Jonathan that the man took his own life sometime in the past forty-eight to seventy-two hours.

The single bullet left in the man’s revolver tells Jonathan what he needs to do, to put an end to this nightmare.

_Killing is a hell of a lot easier than healing._

There is a bed here, neatly made and not as dingy as the rest of the place. Here Jonathan sits, in his bloodied shirt and filthy trousers, with grit under his nails and nothing making any sense. The horrible, impossible absurdity of it all is getting to him, clouding his thoughts. There’s no way this _couldn’t_ all be a nightmare, he decides. So horrific a fantasy has this evening been that this is the only explanation to which a sound mind could come. A rational mind. A sane mind.

Jonathan is a sane man, he tells himself. Hearing voices, speaking to things that never answer, enduring _visions_ like these – for that is what they must be, mustn’t they? People simply don’t roam the streets of London by night, shooting at hapless passers-by. Upstanding citizens don’t awaken in body pits or burn under the heat of an English dawn. That which is seen but cannot be real must, therefore, be classified as a “vision,” because Jonathan dislikes the shape of the word “hallucination.”

Because these things are impossible, and Jonathan Reid – a sane man – has seen them, the only explanation to which he can come is that this night, in its entirety, has been a nightmare.

Jonathan lights a candle, thinks of Mary, and hopes he’s right.

He holds the revolver steady over his heart – he’s seen too many such attempts botched by the twitch of a wrist or the slip of a finger at the moment of truth – and reassures himself of what guides his hand:

“Rational thinking only.”

Jonathan Reid shoots himself in the heart, and wakes up twenty hours later.

He’s not in a body pit. He supposes that’s something.


	2. Chapter 2

Five men are dead, and Jonathan is still thirsty.

Fortunate, then, he supposes, that he eventually finds himself in a pub.

He doesn’t mean to drink from all those hunters, but with a level of credulity that itself alarms him Jonathan determines that his ravenous thirst is likely due, at least in part, to his failed attempt to end the nightmare that was, apparently, his very real life. He’d awoken to chapped lips and a blood-soaked mattress, a headache that rang like a church bell and to that _voice_ in his head:

_Madness, it is! As mad as the moon, who tames blinding sunlight into a glowing reflection._

What would it mean for Jonathan to hear another man’s voice in his head, and _not_ be mad? What would it mean for him to explore every possible answer to his condition, other than a total break with reality? _Other_ than madness?

It would mean entertaining the notion that he might now be a vampire. So, that is what he does.

Jonathan is glad that, whatever else he might now be, he remains a physician; his assessment of the corpse at the waterfront is proof of that. Despite having recently gorged himself on the blood of five sturdy men, Jonathan’s teeth still ache when he finds the puncture wounds on the cadaver’s neck. He observes with interest the way his newfound senses allow him to privilege his notice of a trail of blood, and he follows it to the Turquoise Turtle: damp and dingy as everything else this side of town, but with a barely-there warmth that suggests a man might find life inside, if he were to look. Jonathan does look, and it is shortly after he does this that he comes into the acquaintance of Dr. Edgar Swansea.

With the bombast and dramatic locution of a penny dreadful, Swansea arrests Jonathan with a crucifix. It sets Jonathan’s teeth on edge and blurs his vision, and Swansea has the nerve to sit behind his desk, pleasant as you please, and offer Jonathan a seat afterward. Jonathan takes an immediate disliking to this man, but with no other vampire experts in evidence he decides that he must take what he can get.

He says Jonathan is pale as a corpse and shaking like a tree, and perhaps he is – “but what of it?” he would like to say. If this dandy of a man had been through half of the things Jonathan had, this night, his comportment and attire would likely not appear so tidy.

He looks upon Jonathan with pity and informs him that, yes, he is a vampire, and no, he isn’t dreaming – and Swansea has the _audacity_ to ask Jonathan _what he will do_ when he finds whatever creature has crawled from the pits of hell to visit this horror upon his family, as if there is any other path for him to take than that of cruel and bloody vengeance. If he gets some answers along the way, so much the better – but this seems rather like a state of affairs Jonathan will find it difficult to undo. If Swansea is correct, then Jonathan suddenly has a great deal of time to wallow in bitterness and self-pity, if that is his wish.

An hour later, when he finds the lair of the poor creature he will come to know as William Bishop, Jonathan is shaken from his ruthless curiosity; the heights to which his bloodlust have taken him are transformed by careful words in a gentle voice:

“William, my arm… I can’t feel it.”

and,

“William, please stop.”

There is something in Jonathan’s chest, now.

It’s a little like heartache, but it’s edged in red and has needles for teeth, and a deep, dark appetite. For what it hungers, Jonathan does not know.

He discovers that it is “violence” only a minute later, when he visits upon Mr. Bishop violence so intimate and so barbaric that Jonathan feels dread rise like bile in his throat.

When he surrenders to the beast, where does the rest of him go? Will he come back from it, this time, or become lost to its rage? Can he go back to healing, after so ardently devoting himself to the kill?

He does come back, this time, and the beast promptly takes the hindmost so that Doctor Reid can attend to his first new patient in London: one Mister Sean Hampton.

The first words from his pale, trembling lips are to tell Jonathan in a charming brogue that Bishop was an honorable man, a friend and a kindred spirit – another lost soul.

For some reason, hearing Mr. Hampton say this makes Jonathan unbearably, _desperately_ hungry.

Not for food, and not for blood – later he will wonder, horrified, if he had momentarily lusted after the taste of human flesh. But, no: this is not a Skal’s hunger, nor is it an Ekon’s thirst. In the days to come Jonathan will grow to understand that the hunger he feels when he looks at Sean is of another breed entirely. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that Jonathan hungers for Mr. Hampton’s soul.

The fact that he long ago pledged it to God bothers Jonathan very little.

Swansea arrives just in time to miss all of the action, but he does help Jonathan put Mr. Hampton on the path to safety – to a hospital – so in this regard Jonathan considers him at least passing useful. He certainly hadn’t been _expecting_ this strange little man (Edgar, he asks Jonathan to call him) to offer him a safe haven and place of employment, but when considering his other options (none) Jonathan is forced to reluctantly accept. 

Edgar, Jonathan decides on the boat ride to Pembroke, has the mien of a man well-connected beyond his personal merits. He is persistently jovial and jocular in the face of… not just in the face of adversity, but in the face of others’ _hopelessness_ , a feature Jonathan had come to think of as a surefire way to kill morale. There were officers like Edgar at the front, but they didn’t last long – all children of the aristocracy, happier to read about wars than to fight in them; Swansea nearly fails to attend to Sean’s petit-mal while shaking Jonathan’s hand, for Christ’s sake. Good for this hospital, Jonathan thinks, that there are sorts like Nurse Crane around. He only hopes there are more Dorothys than Edgars at the Pembroke.

Edgar somehow takes this all for some great cosmic joke, going on as if Jonathan has not given thought to his profession, throughout all of this - to the bitter irony that a man who knows better than anyone the dangers of bloodborne illness and disease is now condemned to sup from the throats of strangers. That Edgar is so titillated by Jonathan’s predicament is odd, to Jonathan’s mind, but by now the dawn is swift approaching, and he desperately needs rest.

Jonathan follows Nurse Crane’s directions to his second-floor office, but not before ensuring that the bed she’s found for Mr. Hampton is satisfactory. The poor man thinks only of returning to those who need him, and Jonathan basks in the gentleness of this curious stranger before making his silent way to the bed that awaits him.

When he wakes the following night, neither in a pit of corpses nor in a puddle of his own blood, Jonathan smiles for the first time of his renewed life, and revels in the freedom to slake his thirst and ply his trade.

London needs every doctor it can find, after all, and Jonathan looks forward to all the good he will do for his community, and for himself, in light of his curious curse.


End file.
